"You think that God likes football?"

Toady was my last day living as a mountain cabin woman.  I pretty much luxuriated in the house all day as I watched the sky dump a foot of snow on the grounds around me.







I spent over an hour ironing sheets, shirts and pillowcases.  I found a pleated little Victorian number belonging to one of the boys and accepted the challenge of pressing it to perfection.  It took about 45 minutes.  Seriously.



I moved onto the reading nook and immersed myself in "Living with Joy", a sort of self-help book from the mid eighties.   I kind of have to groan and roll my eyes to get past the over-the-top hippie parts, but it's really helping me to keep a level head during this transient time in my life.   I will need to have a good sense of my self established for when I explode on the scene and turn the taxidermy world on its head.



In the afternoon I walked to the CVS about a mile and a half down the road and into "town", then caught up on phone conversations with people and tidied up the house for my impending departure.















Later I discovered the DVD box set for a little show called "Friday Night Lights".  Oh.  My. God.  How I have never seen this show ids beyond me; perhaps I wasn't ready for it until now.  I blew through the first five episodes, sobbing the entire time.  The character development is remarkable, the score is tight, it's got power struggles, drama, hot people, and football plus all the pageantry that goes along with it like marching bands and cheerleaders..  What else is there?







I think I have a crush on every single character in this show.

"Your future self is real and only seperated from you by time."

I had a quiet morning spent driving around getting to know the town that I'm about to leave.  I've logged  more driving time in the past two months than I have in years; and perhaps because of this I'm more aware of the slight nuances of locomoting.  One thing I get a kick out of is the inch-up game.  I do this while waiting in line but it works in cars too. When I'm stopped at a red light, I inch forward just a little bit even though the light shows no signs of turning green any time soon.  Inevitably, the person behind me creeps up as well, and everyone behind them follows suite.  I get a little ego stroke knowing that one small move on my part has affected four or five people who I may never meet.



Mr. M is still having issues with keeping his food down and I figured out that it was the antibiotics making him so sick.  The vet told me to come in so he could have an antibiotic shot, so I bundled him up in a blanket and brought him in.  It was a really sweet, down-homey feeling clinic; everyone was smiling and I could tell immediately that this place was run by people who really loved animals.  We passed an orange tabby on the way in and the doc came right up to us and administered Mr. M's shot as I stood there, holding him.  It was over in a matter of seconds, and then she announced that Muffin was next.  "Muffin!", she called into the waiting room which was empty save a middle-aged woman and her pooch.  I guessed that Muffin might've been the Tabby and suggested he might be outside.  The vet simply stepped out and called, "Muffinnnnnnn!  You're next!".  I found it really comical that there were no humans around.  I imagined Muffin walking down the road to the vet himself, some kind of key-latch-kid type of pet.  Maybe he'd pick up a pack of smokes for his human on the way home.



There was a plumber working on the downstairs bathroom for the majority of the day so I set up camp in the dining room and worked on my taxes.



Later on I watched "Hush hush, Sweet Charlotte"







I'm still not sure what to make of it.  It may be the most bizarre movie I've ever seen.  It did inspire me to do a little reading up on Bette Davis though, and I now feel inspired to be glamorous 27-7.  This means working out while wearing lipstick and ditching sweats for house gowns.

"Philadelphia will never be the same."

Today was my last day of class; I did all the finishing touches on my mounts like airbrushing and epoxying noses, eyes, tear ducts, etc.  Mr. B went over all the rules and regulations with me as far as getting the right licenses and permits to be a professional taxidermist.



Here is my coyote, mouth painted and fabulous.







I think he needs a diamond in his tongue.



This isn't a sex toy.  But it is one of those odd little tools with a very specific function for deer mounts.  What for, you might wonder?







Trade secret, baby.  Mum's the word.



Here I am stapling the deer hide to the form.  This actually happened a few days ago but I forgot to include this picture back then.  We used staple guns that ran on compressed air and now that I have experienced such power, such FORCE, I have nothing but utter disdain for the manual gun that sits waiting for me in my studio at home.







Since she finished a little early, my classmate brought in a mink to skin, that her neighbor had caught near his creek.  Apparently minks are quite common in the wild (if you can call the Poconos that), but have basically no value as far as trappers are concerned because they are farmed en masse.







Fatty little buggers though.  I'll bet she had a blast with this sucker on the fleshing wheel!

"It's late at night but something's brewing."

I took a personal day today; I wanted to stay in and recover from the madness of the weekend.  My husband and two other couples came up to experience the bliss of the Pokes and it was a memorable night.  The house has a new coat of laughter on it which still resonates after everyone has gone back to Philly and I'm still here, with the cats.  Mr. M has been having some frightful (for me) moments of touch and go; I honestly thought we were going to lose him a couple times yesterday.   He's not eating and acting somewhat erratic, laying down in the shower and howling at the door.  It's very upsetting.



Aside from the cat drama, we were able to enjoy some late night sledding, board games (SORRY!!!), and Jenga.







Today I took a long walk down the country roads and did some thinking about my experience up here and how it's changed me.  As I've pursued my dream, I've made some compromises and sacrifices and asked my loved ones to do the same.  Funds have been exceptionally tight and I've had to rely on someone other than myself, which has been quite humbling.



I'm wiggling my way into an industry that, for the most part has been dominated by men.  There is definitely a "type" when it comes to taxidermy nad I've done a decent job of playing chameleon to get as much as I can out of this experience.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore and respect Mr. B, but sometimes I try so hard to be "one of the guys" (in my regular life as well as my mountain life) that I get what I wish for, so to speak, and am told things that I wish I could unhear.







I almost feel like I sold a little piece of my soul along the way but I take comfort in the fact that it only creates room for what remains to grow.

"Counting the days 'til archery season."

Today I got to skin a roadkill Coon for extra credit.  I'm starting to think that the grimy skinning is my favorite part of taxidermy.  I've been looking forward to this all week, getting some guts on my fingers and cutting loose with a surgical steel blade after all that intense modeling clay precision training.



Here's Coony's  busted jaw.  The inside was pretty bad; he bit right through his tongue.







His feet were so soft and fleshy; just like baby feet.







Here are the same feet, inverted.  Raccoons are notoriously fatty; the de-greasing process on their hides is quite time consuming.   The foot on the left has been skinned out, the one on the right still has the paw pads and fat.







I hung him from a meat hook, just like I did with the fox, and here I am at the head part.  I'd just cut the first ear out; it takes a little practice to become intuitive as far as when it's time to cut for the ears and eyes on these small mammals, especially when there is so much fat on the skin; it can obscure the flesh line. Of course I can't help but imagine what my own body would look like skinned, especially after marinating myself in good mountain dairy products and meat for almost two months.







Here he is, skinned down to the nose.  Along with all the fat on the hide, the carcass is positively covered with it.







OK, after this I'm done talking about fat.  But here's what I scraped off  the skin.  I like to bring in the local weeklies from Philly to use at my work station; the massage parlor ads in the back never fail to leave Mr. B fully scandalized.







Today on the radio I heard an old classic by my girl Shania.  For the life of me I can't understand why country music videos are so awful but here's another mind-numbingly stupid one.  It's a shame too because the song is cute and Shania is so boss, y'all.

Hey lookit: the sexy people like me.

ELLE REX is into my foxy flesh. Check her out if you haven't already.

"Want me to mount him with his eyes shut so it looks like how he did when you shot him?"

This is a playful jab I hear often in the studio between Mr. B and his clients, insinuating that they must have gone sneaking up on a buck while it slept.  This is poaching and it's obviously illegal, but the more people I talk to up here, the more I hear about it happening.  It comes to mind now because as I sit here in bed at 9pm, reading, I was just startled by a loud rifle shot just outside the cabin. I jumped out of bed and paced around a bit, feeling jarred.  There's a decent amount of undeveloped acreage surrounding me and I'd be lying if I said the thought of some psycho perv armed to the teeth and lurking around watching me never crossed my mind.  I'm fairly certain though that the shot I just heard was...well, I can't be sure but I'll hazard a guess that the neighbor saw a coyote creeping too close to his house.  Regardless, hearing a shot pierce through such a quiet evening-I mean, the sound conjured a mental image of a train hurtling through the forest-leaves me somewhat unsettled and mill undoubtedly keep me up past my usual 9:30 sleep time.



Today I finished my second buck; I experimented with positioning the ears in an alert, listening fashion as though he were hearing something slightly behind him.  Here he is, with carded ears and stuffy nose.







I'm getting pretty good at the eyes, as far as the lid creases and positioning.







I cleaned up my coyote's mouth a bit; not much interesting going on here but I was amused at how dentist-like this looks.  My mouth started watering just looking at him, imagining the saliva building up in my mouth during a cleaning and just dying to spit.







As the nose skin dries out it tends to shrivel so it gets a little coat of epoxy which will be painted later.







I got home to find Mr. M had invented his own cozy little kitty den.  I'd piled up the duvet on the guest bed while the cover was being laundered....and can you find the cat in this image?







Tada!







Poor little guy is getting as much rest as possible and barely eating.



I spent my evening watching more Honey West.  I discovered the "vintage commercial" feature on the discs and found some of the adverts amusing.



My favorite is the Mennan shaving lotion ad which starts at 2:53 in the video below.  I don't see anything refreshing about the way those paws are manhandling that guy's face.